Shafia relatives threatened, shunned for testifying against family

Shafia relatives threatened, shunned for testifying against family

MONTREAL — The Shafia honour killing trial heard from plenty of Afghan witnesses prepared to vouch for the parents and son accused of murdering four female members of their family.

Mohammad Shafia’s half-brother said Shafia was being framed because of his wealth. A brother of Tooba Mohammad Yahya, Shafia’s second wife, swore his brother-in-law was an upstanding businessman, as did another Shafia associate. The Shafias’ 18-year-old son, brother to three murdered sisters, described the family home as “happy, joyful.”

In the end, the jury dismissed their testimony and found Shafia, Yahya and their 21-year-old son Hamed guilty of first-degree murder in a Kingston, Ont., courtroom on Sunday.

The verdict, in part, can be attributed to the testimony of three members of the extended Shafia clan who felt obliged to tell the truth about what was going on in the family’s Montreal home. For their efforts, they have been shunned by family and subjected to threats.

Latif Hyderi, an uncle of Yahya who lives in Montreal, offered shocking testimony about a conversation he had with Shafia about his 19-year-old daughter. Zainab, desperate to escape her oppressive home, had married her boyfriend, then promptly had the union annulled. Shafia told Mr. Hyderi she was a whore. “She is dirty. She is a curse to me,” Mr. Hyderi recalled Shafia telling him. Shafia, who was away on business, told him: “If I was there, I would have killed her.”

Mr. Hyderi’s son, Reza, 31, said in an interview that his family was threatened after deciding to go to the police with suspicions that the deaths of Zainab, Sahar, 17, and 13-year-old Geeti Shafia and Shafia’s other wife, Rona Amir Mohammad, were no accident.

“We used to receive calls from people, threatening over the phone,” he said. One cousin warned him not to “create problems for yourself and for others.”

Since ignoring the threats, his family “has been completely abandoned by the Afghan community,” he said, calling the response disturbing.

“Honestly I don’t care about myself. I don’t care if they don’t talk to me or if I’m not in their society,” Mr. Hyderi said.

“But my parents, they’re very, very good people, and this is their world. They cannot communicate either in English or in French. They’ve grown up in Afghan society. It’s everything to them. And suddenly you snatch everything from them.… It’s a punishment for the fact that my Dad went to testify against Mr. Shafia.”

Fazil Javad, a brother of Yahya, travelled from Sweden to testify about another conversation with Shafia. He said Shafia had talked about planning a family trip to Sweden to kill Zainab. “He told me that we will put her in water and drown her,” Mr. Javad testified. He said Shafia cursed his daughter and complained that she was dating a young Pakistani man.

Mr. Hyderi said Mr. Javad, his cousin, has also been ostracized by the family for speaking out. Reached in Sweden, Mr. Javad, who speaks limited English, said, he was tired of talking about Shafia. “They are crazy people,” he said. “How can a father kill his children? I don’t understand.” Since the deaths, he added, “I am always thinking about it.… I cannot sleep.”

The third family member to testify for the Crown was Diba Masoomi, a sister of Ms. Mohammad living in France. She had written to police soon after the deaths to alert them something was fishy. To begin with, she could not understand why Ms. Mohammad had been referred to as a cousin when she was the first wife in Shafia’s polygamous marriage. But worse, she reported that Ms. Mohammad and Zainab had received death threats.

Murder charges were filed two weeks later, in July 2009. That fall, Ms. Masoomi began receiving mysterious calls from Dubai, where the Shafias had lived before moving to Canada in 2007 and where Shafia still travelled frequently for business.

Wali Abdali, Ms. Masoomi’s brother, said his sister was frightened by the calls. “Three times they called after my sister had filed a complaint against Shafia about the deaths. They called her telling her to withdraw her complaint,” Mr. Abdali said. “They said they are not murderers, they never killed anyone, you have to withdraw your complaint.”

She persisted, travelling to Kingston, Ont., to testify at the preliminary inquiry and at the trial. In November she testified that before her death, her sister had told her about overhearing Shafia plotting to kill Zainab. “I will kill her because she dishonoured me,” she quoted Shafia as saying.

Mr. Abdali said they never learned who made the calls, and they did not report them to police because they eventually stopped. But he said he remained nervous. “Every time she had to travel, I would accompany her,” he said. “I didn’t want to lose a second sister.”